'The Americans' faces a treacherous parent trap

Feb. 25, 2014
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Deep-cover Soviet spy Philip (Matthew Rhys) is thrown for a loop when he is forced to bring son Henry (Keidrich Sellati) along on a work encounter with an American agent on the second-season premiere of 'The Americans.' / Craig Blankenhorn, FX

by Robert Bianco, USA TODAY

by Robert Bianco, USA TODAY

That proves to be particularly true this season for The Americans' Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, who had two children as a way to solidify their arranged marriage. Love between the couple grew over time, finally blossoming last season. Love for their children happened instantly.

The complication? The Jennings are Soviet spies posing as an ordinary suburban couple in Ronald Reagan's America, and their children, like their marriage, were simply meant to be espionage cover. Yet what these two characters, so fabulously played by Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, are about to realize as this excellent series returns is that their jobs put their children at risk. And caring about those children will put their jobs -- and their lives -- at risk as well.

As one of Elizabeth's fellow Russian spies tells her, "Nothing prepares you for them growing up. Here."

That lack of preparation is made clear in a seemingly innocent family visit to an amusement park that goes hideously wrong. It's possible their cover has been blown, but they don't know for sure, and they don't know by whom.

It's also possible that their teenage daughter (Holly Taylor) could be on to the secret they've worked so hard to keep from their children. Her nascent suspicions have blossomed, so much so that she's planning field trips to investigate the stories her mother has told her.

There's a risk in building a story around a snooping teenager: It recalls similar plots in 24 and Homeland that left us wishing the children were seen rather than heard, and it runs against our own shared experience that teenagers generally don't consider their parents interesting enough to explore. The payoff here, though, is in the reaction it provokes from Philip, a complex blend of parental concern and cold, operative rage.

That kind of duality is the central joy of The Americans, which mixes the suburban mundane with sudden bursts of spy-movie sex and violence. And by telling this story from the Soviet perspective, it makes clear what those spy movies generally obscure: That innocent lives are routinely sacrificed for a larger national purpose. You see James Bond gun down guards and soldiers and you don't think twice. When Philip kills a young man, or Elizabeth terrorizes a plant worker, you feel it.

Granted, not everything works as well or feels as fresh as the show's central relationship. As good as Noah Emmerich is as Stan Beeman, having an FBI agent move in next door still feels like too obvious a plot contrivance, and his relationship with the Jennings â?? he's searching for two spies but doesn't realize they're the spies he's seeking â?? feels too much like a variation on Breaking Bad. It works, but it's clunky â?? though that's hardly a big problem considering how many things the show does well.